Midnight at the Edge of a Cauldron on Jupiter
“Okay, so it’s a way down this track then. Just forty-one kilometres and we’ll be there.”
In truth, Lee seemed pretty happy where we were. We’d each had a restorative hot dog in the café, one of the few food items that’s even vaguely affordable in these parts, and we’d wandered around the waterfall basin at Godafoss, pitching our tripods at judiciously chosen spots to hide the steady stream of other visitors. Lee liked Godafoss a lot it seemed. So did I for that matter, but ever since I’d seen Mads Peter-Iversen’s visit on YouTube, the propsect of visiting Aldeyjarfoss, now just at the far end of the dirt road whose entrance was a hundred metres across the way was the one that had found me persuading him that we should do the circle and drive the entire ring road. On film, the utterly remote panhandle shaped cauldron surrounded by basalt columns for walls that had captured my imagination wasn’t that far away. It was why we were in the north of the country rather than somewhere on the packed south coast.
But of course it still wasn’t quite that simple. The first thirty-seven kilometres would be fine. It might be a little bit bumpy now and again as I drove the van carefully through the never ending daylight along the dark grey cinders, initially beside the improbably named Skjálfandafljót River (try saying that with a mouthful of fermented shark meat), but for the last four where the F26 began, we’d be on foot. You see, Brian, our lovingly maintained but distinctly elderly VW camper didn’t have four wheel drive, and that’s something you need once you’re on the mountain roads, or the F roads as they’re numbered. Unless that is, you want to be numbered. The first law of driving in Iceland states “thou shalt not drive upon the F roads unless behind the wheel of a four wheel drive vehicle unless thou wishes to be heavily fined and discover thine insurance is invalid when thou gettest to the tricky sections and dislodgest thine crankshaft.” Or words to that effect. Brian had a very long way to go before we’d return him to the rental counter in Reykjavik, and despite the fact that the likelihood of bumping into a lonely police officer in a bad mood out here seemed as remote as the location itself, common sense prevailed. We’d walk those last four kilometres. It would be worth it. Anyway, what better way to pass the midnight hour having a natter with your mate about life the universe and everything as you wander through a landscape that could be on Jupiter?
In fact it didn’t take long before the plain obviousness of the reason for the first commandment of driving in Iceland became apparent. Less than ten minutes after parking Brian at the end of the navigable road where we'd scarcely seen a building let alone any form of settlement, we were strolling along a potholed terrain that even your local councils would have the good grace to send the maintenance teams in to make good. Occasionally the road would ramp up at a gradient that promised to test almost anything that wasn’t sporting sturdy footwear. How even the beefiest of the monster vehicles on steroids we’d seen on our journey here could make it along this stretch was a question we weren’t sure we could answer. We carried on walking, thanking the heavens that there was only the slightest drift of Icelandic drizzle on the air, accompanied by the thunderous sound of crashing water through the nearby landscape. We couldn’t see it yet, but evidently the river with the unpronounceable name was back, somewhere to the left of us. Somewhere not too far away, the cauldron awaited our pleasure. Gradually the thundering increased, announcing that the waterfall was close at hand. And then we were there, gaping over a sight as jaw droppingly handsome as could be imagined, with not another soul to be seen. Any mishaps out here and we would make excellent first and second courses for the buzzards. Rarely have I been so acutely aware of being totally alone as we were in this visceral landscape of rocks and ravines, and rarely have I relished that loneliness quite so much as I did right now. Our only company was a huge bird of prey, which we sent Dave a picture of for identification, forgetting in our excitement that it was just past midnight. He didn’t reply immediately. And we still don’t know what it was, although perhaps it had read our minds. It flew off before anything more than a phone camera could be pointed at it. Probably waiting not too far away with interest, watching to see whether a free buffet was about to unexpectedly arrive.
The sun had set briefly, leaving a pink blush over the rocky western horizon. Like a good student, the one detail apart from not falling in that I’d made sure to observe from Mads’ video was that 0.8 seconds would reveal that magical mosaic in the basin, and slavishly I stuck to it. At one point in “what the hell” mode I tried the ten stop, but all of the definition in the water was lost. Still, no harm in trying it, just in case. Then for a while we traced the route down the rocks into the basin itself, our tripods low to the water but always maintaining a respectful distance. Iceland always demands respect. There seem to be so many ways in which to die extravagantly in this country, but when you’ve got an SD card full of shots taken in places you never dared to dream of, the impetus to remain among the living and return home to edit them is pretty powerful.
For a while it was going well, but then two things happened. Firstly a group of interlopers arrived (by which of course I mean other people just as entitled to be there as us), three young couples pouring out of a pair of the aforementioned beefy road monsters and into the scene, stealing the best positions. And then my camera earned itself a place on the naughty step. Usually the “off and on switch” tactic works, and if not, then taking the battery out and replacing it does the trick, but now my camera had joined me in uncharted territory. Only a full system reset brought it sulkily back to life. Off we were again, although it would be more than thirty-six hours before I remembered that default mode only gives you jpegs when later I stared in frustration at the back of the screen at Vestrahorn – but that’s another story. It’s so easy to forget the basics when you’re flustered. At least I’d already got the shot I wanted. Before long the interlopers’ girlfriends were making it clear that they were getting both cold and bored, and they repaired to their off roaders without asking us whether we might like a lift back to the van that they’d presumably noticed when they’d passed it on the way here. There wasn’t even a pandemic going on then. We were done here too now, and began the rutted walk back to where Brian waited patiently at the end of the track, leaving the cauldron to boil away noisily to itself in this most outlandish of places, and the unidentified raptor to find something else for supper.
Lee confessed that he still preferred Godafoss as we drove back beneath the rising morning sun to the big car park there, where we sipped our cans of Viking lager at 2am and plotted an extracurricular whale watching trip out of Husavik at the sixty-sixth parallel the following morning. Yet another story there. There are plenty of them in Iceland. I’d originally posted this one not long after returning, but it was before this writing thing became a thing, and since that time I’ve found myself sharing these pages with so many more of you. So here it is again, despite a complete absence of demand for the retelling of old tales. But it’s one I felt the need to document more fully for my own memory banks at any rate.
And if you want to read more about Brian and how he got his name, well that story is right here too. You can even see a picture of him. Funnily enough, it seems that this is where the story telling side gathered some sense of momentum.
www.flickr.com/photos/126574513@N04/49476904751/in/album-...
I look back at the Iceland 2019 album in these pages, still liking some of the images, but thinking how I might have taken better ones in some places. In the case of others, I keep on promising myself I'll get round to taking them through the editing suite again, but of course that never happens. The second visit to Iceland is now only a couple of months in the waiting. Regretfully Aldeyjarfoss and Godafoss aren’t on the itinerary this time, but we have booked a four wheel drive with chunky tyres and a big attitude. Hopefully we’ll find we’ve learned something new as we return to the surface of Jupiter. Hopefully that starkly mesmeric landscape will leave us just as dumbstruck as it did last time.
Midnight at the Edge of a Cauldron on Jupiter
“Okay, so it’s a way down this track then. Just forty-one kilometres and we’ll be there.”
In truth, Lee seemed pretty happy where we were. We’d each had a restorative hot dog in the café, one of the few food items that’s even vaguely affordable in these parts, and we’d wandered around the waterfall basin at Godafoss, pitching our tripods at judiciously chosen spots to hide the steady stream of other visitors. Lee liked Godafoss a lot it seemed. So did I for that matter, but ever since I’d seen Mads Peter-Iversen’s visit on YouTube, the propsect of visiting Aldeyjarfoss, now just at the far end of the dirt road whose entrance was a hundred metres across the way was the one that had found me persuading him that we should do the circle and drive the entire ring road. On film, the utterly remote panhandle shaped cauldron surrounded by basalt columns for walls that had captured my imagination wasn’t that far away. It was why we were in the north of the country rather than somewhere on the packed south coast.
But of course it still wasn’t quite that simple. The first thirty-seven kilometres would be fine. It might be a little bit bumpy now and again as I drove the van carefully through the never ending daylight along the dark grey cinders, initially beside the improbably named Skjálfandafljót River (try saying that with a mouthful of fermented shark meat), but for the last four where the F26 began, we’d be on foot. You see, Brian, our lovingly maintained but distinctly elderly VW camper didn’t have four wheel drive, and that’s something you need once you’re on the mountain roads, or the F roads as they’re numbered. Unless that is, you want to be numbered. The first law of driving in Iceland states “thou shalt not drive upon the F roads unless behind the wheel of a four wheel drive vehicle unless thou wishes to be heavily fined and discover thine insurance is invalid when thou gettest to the tricky sections and dislodgest thine crankshaft.” Or words to that effect. Brian had a very long way to go before we’d return him to the rental counter in Reykjavik, and despite the fact that the likelihood of bumping into a lonely police officer in a bad mood out here seemed as remote as the location itself, common sense prevailed. We’d walk those last four kilometres. It would be worth it. Anyway, what better way to pass the midnight hour having a natter with your mate about life the universe and everything as you wander through a landscape that could be on Jupiter?
In fact it didn’t take long before the plain obviousness of the reason for the first commandment of driving in Iceland became apparent. Less than ten minutes after parking Brian at the end of the navigable road where we'd scarcely seen a building let alone any form of settlement, we were strolling along a potholed terrain that even your local councils would have the good grace to send the maintenance teams in to make good. Occasionally the road would ramp up at a gradient that promised to test almost anything that wasn’t sporting sturdy footwear. How even the beefiest of the monster vehicles on steroids we’d seen on our journey here could make it along this stretch was a question we weren’t sure we could answer. We carried on walking, thanking the heavens that there was only the slightest drift of Icelandic drizzle on the air, accompanied by the thunderous sound of crashing water through the nearby landscape. We couldn’t see it yet, but evidently the river with the unpronounceable name was back, somewhere to the left of us. Somewhere not too far away, the cauldron awaited our pleasure. Gradually the thundering increased, announcing that the waterfall was close at hand. And then we were there, gaping over a sight as jaw droppingly handsome as could be imagined, with not another soul to be seen. Any mishaps out here and we would make excellent first and second courses for the buzzards. Rarely have I been so acutely aware of being totally alone as we were in this visceral landscape of rocks and ravines, and rarely have I relished that loneliness quite so much as I did right now. Our only company was a huge bird of prey, which we sent Dave a picture of for identification, forgetting in our excitement that it was just past midnight. He didn’t reply immediately. And we still don’t know what it was, although perhaps it had read our minds. It flew off before anything more than a phone camera could be pointed at it. Probably waiting not too far away with interest, watching to see whether a free buffet was about to unexpectedly arrive.
The sun had set briefly, leaving a pink blush over the rocky western horizon. Like a good student, the one detail apart from not falling in that I’d made sure to observe from Mads’ video was that 0.8 seconds would reveal that magical mosaic in the basin, and slavishly I stuck to it. At one point in “what the hell” mode I tried the ten stop, but all of the definition in the water was lost. Still, no harm in trying it, just in case. Then for a while we traced the route down the rocks into the basin itself, our tripods low to the water but always maintaining a respectful distance. Iceland always demands respect. There seem to be so many ways in which to die extravagantly in this country, but when you’ve got an SD card full of shots taken in places you never dared to dream of, the impetus to remain among the living and return home to edit them is pretty powerful.
For a while it was going well, but then two things happened. Firstly a group of interlopers arrived (by which of course I mean other people just as entitled to be there as us), three young couples pouring out of a pair of the aforementioned beefy road monsters and into the scene, stealing the best positions. And then my camera earned itself a place on the naughty step. Usually the “off and on switch” tactic works, and if not, then taking the battery out and replacing it does the trick, but now my camera had joined me in uncharted territory. Only a full system reset brought it sulkily back to life. Off we were again, although it would be more than thirty-six hours before I remembered that default mode only gives you jpegs when later I stared in frustration at the back of the screen at Vestrahorn – but that’s another story. It’s so easy to forget the basics when you’re flustered. At least I’d already got the shot I wanted. Before long the interlopers’ girlfriends were making it clear that they were getting both cold and bored, and they repaired to their off roaders without asking us whether we might like a lift back to the van that they’d presumably noticed when they’d passed it on the way here. There wasn’t even a pandemic going on then. We were done here too now, and began the rutted walk back to where Brian waited patiently at the end of the track, leaving the cauldron to boil away noisily to itself in this most outlandish of places, and the unidentified raptor to find something else for supper.
Lee confessed that he still preferred Godafoss as we drove back beneath the rising morning sun to the big car park there, where we sipped our cans of Viking lager at 2am and plotted an extracurricular whale watching trip out of Husavik at the sixty-sixth parallel the following morning. Yet another story there. There are plenty of them in Iceland. I’d originally posted this one not long after returning, but it was before this writing thing became a thing, and since that time I’ve found myself sharing these pages with so many more of you. So here it is again, despite a complete absence of demand for the retelling of old tales. But it’s one I felt the need to document more fully for my own memory banks at any rate.
And if you want to read more about Brian and how he got his name, well that story is right here too. You can even see a picture of him. Funnily enough, it seems that this is where the story telling side gathered some sense of momentum.
www.flickr.com/photos/126574513@N04/49476904751/in/album-...
I look back at the Iceland 2019 album in these pages, still liking some of the images, but thinking how I might have taken better ones in some places. In the case of others, I keep on promising myself I'll get round to taking them through the editing suite again, but of course that never happens. The second visit to Iceland is now only a couple of months in the waiting. Regretfully Aldeyjarfoss and Godafoss aren’t on the itinerary this time, but we have booked a four wheel drive with chunky tyres and a big attitude. Hopefully we’ll find we’ve learned something new as we return to the surface of Jupiter. Hopefully that starkly mesmeric landscape will leave us just as dumbstruck as it did last time.